Beads
by Jadet
Summary: An introspective piece set during ch. 130. Kyou realizes that despite the pain and hurt they have caused him, what's on his wrist are just beads....


Disclaimer: I don't own Fruits Basket or its characters. I wish I did. Then I could have Kyou-kun all to myself. XD 

Authors Notes: This story takes place during chapter 130. i.e. Waaaaayyyy past the current English releases. So if you don't want to be spoiled, please look elsewhere.  
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...Okay, hopefully those who don't want to be spoiled have left. For those that do, a small blurb of explanation. In chapter 130, we discover that Akito has released all the Jyuuinshi from the curse (w00t!). Kyou and Tohru are the first to realize this when they hug (for a completely different reason) and, WOW, Kyou doesn't change!! So Kyou backs away from Tohru and proceeds to stare at the beads on his wrist. Then in a totally awesome scene, he rips the bracelet from his wrist and sends the beads flying. It's a really powerful moment. The beads fall on the ground, Tohru starts crying with joy because Kyou isn't transforming, and Kyou allows himself hope. The chapter ends with the two of them hugging.

Very, very cool.

Now, this story is my attempt to imagine what Kyou might have felt just before he rips the bracelet off his wrist. The manga scene is very powerful and poignant; you really want to cry and cheer for Kyou as he (symbolically) frees himself from the curse. So if you can, please find the scans online! It's worth it!

NEway, here's my take on the scene. Please enjoy!

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**"Beads"**  
A Fruits Basket Fanfiction  
By Jadet  
Copyright 06'

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When Kyou truly thought about it, it was only a bracelet; a string of 12 alternating red and white beads. The beads were the size and texture of marbles; the string, old and thin. He had glanced at them so often, fiddled with them when he was agitated or upset so many times, he had forgotten what they were. It was what they meant, what they represented, that he had focused on.

Pain. Imprisonment.

Death.

The beads were the mark of the cat, the most cursed of all the jyuuinchi. They kept the monster inside him at bay, but likewise imprisoned him. He would never be free as long as they wrapped around his wrist. He would never be like the other Jyuuinshi.

Though they were only beads, they were an effective shackle. Though they could be removed, had been a few times, the repercussions had always weighed more heavily. His true form, his monster form, had scared anyone who laid eyes on his grotesque body. While he could speak, his voice had come out in a hideous scream. It had hurt to transform; his skin had sizzled and stretched over rapidly growing bones.

To avoid that pain, that fear, he had kept the beads. Protected them as they protected the world from his true form. But they were a shackle; a sign to all who knew. They marked the hated cat that had to be imprisoned.

Kyou glanced at his wrist and the beads around it. They didn't weigh much, a couples ounces at most due to their unique material, but he had always been aware of their weight. Always felt their cool surface against his skin, felt the pain of their indentations when they pressed into the soft skin of his wrist. More than that, he could feel the drag of those beads as they lead him inescapably closer to that dark room. It was like they had an internal clock only he could hear, a clicking that to anyone else were two beads merely bouncing off each other. But he knew. His beads were there as a warning and a reminder.

He was the cat and fated for a shackled life.

Or, he had been.

Now they were just beads. Small, insignificant, meaningless on his wrist. The weight was familiar, as it had always been, but the underlying weight was gone. He no longer felt the pulse of the beads as he always had, didn't hear their relentless clock ticking away the minutes of his freedom.

They were simply beads; six red, six white. No more than a quarter-inch in diameter and held loosely around his wrist by a thread generations old.

That's why it was so easy for him to simply tear them from his wrist.

There was no transformation, no pain or overpowering humiliation. Instead, his wrist felt naked, the familiar weight gone. He stared at his hand as though he had never seen it before. And in a way, he hadn't.

They littered the ground around him. Tiny specs of red and white against the cool grey of cement. Abandoned, hopeless. A petit hand reached down and grasped a white bead, feeling its weight.

Did it feel free of its brothers and sisters, or the loneliness of its sudden solitude? Or did it feel like him, unsteady like a newborn child, suddenly grasping what it had so long reached for?

But it was only a bead, nothing more.

He looked at Tohru, saw the tears tumbling down her cheeks, and could feel the same on his own.

And then he was holding her and for the first time, feeling the warmth and weight of something other than beads.

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Please rate and review! Thanks. XD 


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